CMDBuild Newsletter nr. 104

We are excited to announce the release of CMDBuild version 3.4.4, which brings several new features, improvements, and bug fixes to enhance the user experience. 

Key new features include the management of foreign keys in classes and processes, the ability to create and use standard filters when adding or modifying relations, and improved permissions management for waterWAY gates. Additionally, we've added error handling for waterWAY plugins and a "selected only" button in certain grids for better usability. 

In terms of improvements, users can now use parameters in CQL filters on domains, define export models on superclasses, and benefit from faster CSV print times for classes with large datasets. Formula attributes are now visible in superclasses, and full-text search has been enhanced, especially for lookup array attributes. 

This release also addresses several bugs to ensure greater stability and performance. 

For more details and to download version 3.4.4, please visit our project website. 

DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is the European Regulation aimed at standardizing digital security protocols within financial organizations. The DORA regulation is focused on strengthening the cyber resilience and risk management of the financial sector. It establishes a series of requirements covering IT risk management, the obligation to report significant incidents, guidelines for resilience testing, rules governing the interaction between financial organizations and technology vendors, and regulatory oversight of the implementation of security measures.

In the context of DORA, Configuration Management becomes essential, with the identification of Configuration Items (CIs), mapping the configuration of assets, services, systems, and IT infrastructure. Equally important is the mapping of relationships and interdependencies among critical CIs and the lifecycle management of assets.

In this area, CMDBuild, with all its technical and functional features for configuration management, fully meets the need to establish a central repository (CMDB) that supports organizations in complying with DORA's regulatory requirements.

One of the most significant advantages of CMDBuild is that it gathers all the necessary data for the company’s IT activities in a single location, providing IT managers with visibility over all company assets. CMDBuild helps prevent service interruptions, significantly reduces the time needed to resolve an anomaly, ensures compliance, avoids security and audit penalties, and helps understand important service contexts for decision-making.

Some of the key features of CMDBuild in supporting DORA are listed below:

• CENTRALIZED REPOSITORY: It ensures a unique, centralized, and up-to-date source of information, enabling continuous improvement in the delivery of IT services.
• CHANGE DOCUMENTATION: It allows for the documentation of changes; the information collected highlights which users, services, assets, or CIs may be impacted by a particular change.
• DATA INTEGRATION: Data from external sources, such as third-party applications or management and monitoring systems, can be easily integrated into CMDBuild using the Service Bus waterWAY.
• CONFIGURATION ITEMS LINKED TO INCIDENT/PROBLEM/CHANGE: All Configuration Items (CIs) linked to an Incident, Problem, or Change can be easily mapped. The Configuration Item details provide complete information specific to that element (code, location, warranties, assignment, supplier, etc.).
• RELATIONSHIPS AND INTERDEPENDENCIES: The details of Configuration Items and the relationships between them are available in an overall graphical view, along with the visualization of analytical data.
• IMPACT ANALYSIS: It is possible to generate analysis reports identifying all the CIs impacted by malfunctions or issues encountered during operations. A detailed analysis of the impacts is generated from the CI relationships, assisting the operator handling the Incident to quickly understand which systems to check for functionality and, if necessary, take prompt action.
  The impact analysis document thus becomes a quick consultation tool to support Remediation efforts.

T&A SYSTEME implements IT infrastructure projects and IT services with standard technologies from leading manufacturers. 

As a medium-sized, cash-flow-financed company, T&A SYSTEME is independent and solidly positioned. We have various well-known manufacturer certifications and extensive experience from national and international projects.  

We have been an SD-WAN service provider and virtual network operator (VNO) since 2015 and are also an experienced value-added reseller of the market-leading manufacturer in the SD-WAN sector. We have already connected over 3,500 locations in over 80 countries for enterprise customers. We ensure that all company branches are optimally networked - from line procurement to management. The division is characterized by strong growth. 

As an SD-WAN service provider, in addition to worldwide logistics and on-site installation, we also offer fully managed operation including 24x7 support and corresponding monitoring. Our solution is based on the customer receiving connectivity at their locations and T&A takes care of line procurement with local providers worldwide, provides the corresponding hardware and monitors all components around the clock from its headquarter in Germany. Our international team can operate in all required languages and rectify any faults that occur thanks to appropriate redundancies.  

This requires extensive information that could not be flexibly mapped in any database. With the expansion of the business unit and each new customer project, new requirements for data storage and the user interface arose. At the same time, extensive monitoring systems had to be developed and set up, which had to retrieve the required data using an API and always have information available. 

We opted for the Tecnoteca CMDBuild solution. We were able to implement the entire data model from scratch and implement all the required information very quickly and flexibly. Another advantage is the multilingualism of the solution, which not only enables us to design the user interface in several languages, but the database also makes it possible to maintain translations in just one place and use them immediately in all connected IT systems. Multilingual dashboards can even be displayed in Microsoft Power BI. The result is a single point of information that prevents data collection and maintenance in distributed systems and concentrates it in one database. This not only saves us time in data maintenance, provides also additional data consistency. CMDBuild also allows us to use this consistent and up-to-date data in other IT systems. 

Over the past few years, the Tecnoteca team has always provided us with reliable support and numerous ideas and solutions, e.g. to map our individual business logic in individual fields. We have found that all requirements could be met without having to adapt the basic solution. The solution contains so much flexibility and configuration options that we have never reached a hard limit. Our own development team is always amazed by this. At the same time, the solution continues to develop and provides us with additional options for new solutions to make the required information available to users even more quickly or easily. 

CMDBuild enables us to provide SD-WAN at thousands of our customers' locations worldwide and to use 4G/5G and the Starlink satellite network as part of our solution in addition to fiber and copper-based Internet lines. 

Oliver Schmidt (CFO)